till (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Wilson -- in 1973, I was eleven years old, and "That Nigger's Crazy" was
my first exposure blue comedy albums, adult black humor (and speech),
and a bunch of other things.  It distressed my parents that I found it
so funny (and it distressed my dad that _he_ found it so funny).  And
since I was allowed to have TNC, my brother (two years younger) was
allowed to have Cheech & Chong's Wedding Album.

There were lots of expressions that this fishbelly-white churchgoing boy
heard for the first time off that album.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society
> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 1:47 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: till
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: till
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------------
>
> Bill suggests that "Perhaps this line followed the one quoted
> by Wilson??" Or perhaps the line that Bill quotes preceded
> the one that I quoted. I'm easy WRT this point. The rap makes
> sense, either way.
>
> What's interesting to me is that "pitch a bitch" was new to
> Bill, at least at the time that he heard the CD (or was it
> the LP?). Spears dates the phrase only to "late 1900's" and
> doesn't specify U.S. black use. I've been familiar with this
> phrase since about 1950. The LP dates to no later than 1973.
>
> -Wilson
>
>
>
> On 7/23/07, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> > Subject:      Re: till
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ---------
> >
> >
> > >I should point out that "half pas(t)" occurred only in
> this locution
> > >and not in ordinary speech. To quote Richard Pryor:
> > >
> > >Q. "What y'all waitin' for?"
> > >A. "'Leven-thirty. Don't nothin' start happenin' till
> eleven-thirty."
> >
> > As I recall it, the answer is "Leven-thirty.  We gonna
> pitch a bitch
> > at ele= ven-thirty."
> > (Perhaps this line followed the one quoted by Wilson??)
> >
> > This was the first time I ever heard "pitch a bitch", a
> phrase which
> > has se= rved me well over the intervening years.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
> --
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
> complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
>                                               -Sam'l Clemens
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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